Celestia Forums

I just downloaded and installed Celestia 1.6.1 today. I saved a bookmark for Ariel (Uranus' moon), exited Celestia and then opened Celestia an hour later. The bookmark I had saved was nowhere to be found. So, I again created the bookmark, placed it in its own bookmark folder and exited Celestia. Once again, upon opening, the bookmark was gone. I tried several more times, but the bookmarks are not being saved.

Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong? Thank you in advance.

I don't think bookmarks save. Sorry though.

What operating system do you use?

Bookmarking code is too fragile. Maybe you just don't have a required folder. Tell us your OS and I'll check in sources.

I have seen this in only one case. If the file favorites.cel is set to "read-only".

On Windows 10, try running Celestia "as administrator".

I am using Windows 7 Pro.

Added after 6 minutes 52 seconds:
@ArtBlos: The file favorites.cel does not exist in the Celestia directory (folder) proper. Where would this file normally reside on a Windows 7 machine?

By the way, thank you all for your attempts to assist.

thomcomstock wrote:The file favorites.cel does not exist in the Celestia directory (folder) proper. Where would this file normally reside on a Windows 7 machine?

I believe it is in the following directory:
C:\Users\<Your Username>\AppData\Roaming\Celestia
At least that's where the bookmarks.xbel file is located for versions of Celestia 1.7.0, so IDK if this also happens to be the location of the favorites.cel file.

thomcomstock wrote:I am using Windows 7 Pro.
@ArtBlos: The file favorites.cel does not exist in the Celestia directory (folder) proper. Where would this file normally reside on a Windows 7 machine?

Win7 doesn't allow writing to Program Files (x86)\Celestia unless you are administrator, but that's bad idea to increase privileges. What you should do is to open celestia.cfg file in that directory and change the following line:
FavoritesFile "favorites.cel"

replace favorites.cel with full path with writeable folder, for example c:\users\myuser\favorites.cel

Added after 56 seconds:

CM1215 wrote:I believe it is in the following directory:
C:\Users\<Your Username>\AppData\Roaming\Celestia

No, for native win32 interface the current directory is used by default.

You might consider re-installing Celestia into a folder that you are allowed to modify. Windows has become more and more protective about its "Program Files" directories. If you install Celestia into a folder that you own, the many protection problems go away.

For example, you might create the folder C:\\Users\<your userid>\MyPrograms
and install Celestia into C:\\Users\<your userid>\MyPrograms\Celestia

I had not 'favorites.cel'

With Windows 10, in celestia.cfg, I have write :
FavoritesFile "C:/Users/myUserID/AppData/Roaming/Celestia/favorites.cel"

myUserID is the name of the user in Windows

In the same place, there is the file: bookmarks.xbel

Interestingly enough, I could not find it, so I did a search: It turned up in C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming\Celestia. However, for some strange reason, I do not have access to C:\Users\Default in Windows Explorer despite being my machine's sole administrator. It has been over two decades since I was a Windows technician and I just cannot figure out why or how to regain privilages.

However, that said, I can reinstall Celestia onto a different drive. - I really should have changed to Linux way-back-when -